Humans are made of atoms. Atoms behave continuously. Therefore, human decisions are continuous. A human can no more follow the algorithm you gave than Buridan’s ass can follow the algorithm of “Eat the bigger bale of hay first, or the one on the left if you can’t tell which is bigger”.
There is the whole quanta thing with quantum physics, but when you get to that point there are bigger problems. Which future does the Time Turner come from? How can you have single universe time travel when the physics you’re using already established more than one universe?
Humans are systems of atoms. Systems of atoms behave continuously. Therefore, human decisions are continuous.
It’s the same principle that lets me conclude that any machine you make obeys the law of conservation of energy when all I know is that it’s made of atoms.
Lots of things are discreet to within measurement error. Flip a coin. Its heads or its tails or you flip again. There is some (not exactly zero) probability the coin along with many other atoms spontaneously reconfigure into a Velociraptor and eat you. But in practice its binary.
What measurement error? If there was some sort of god that was not quite omniscient that tried to find a self-consistent timeline, then it would have a hard time. To my knowledge, there’s no way that god could generally even be sure any given point is anywhere near a stable time loop, no matter how precise its measurement. I don’t get the impression there is such a god. It’s just that one of the self-consistent timelines happen. The universe has a set of laws of physics and a set of initial conditions, and some timeline where all that applies happens.
It means that a sufficiently small change in the initial value will cause an arbitrarily small change in the final value. This is true for real life systems, but if you had a truly binary system, it wouldn’t be. For example, if you have a switch that conducts electricity if it’s flipped more than half way, and you flip it exactly half way, then if you flip it any more, no matter how little you move it, it will instantly go from being an insulator to being a conductor.
This is true of a particular model of reality, namely classical mechanics, but it seems to be a contentious claim that it’s true of reality itself. AFAIK physicists take the possibility that reality might be discrete fairly seriously.
To my knowledge, it’s true of every model of reality.
There have already been stable time loops in both canon Harry Potter and in Methods. If the universe is discrete, there won’t generally be a stable time loop. It’s not going to take Harry trying to break time to cause a paradox.
The universe is chaotic. Not every aspect is, but that’s not necessary. If you go back in time one way and look at the Brownian motion, and go back with the initial conditions changed by one, the Brownian motion will be completely different. It will basically be random. If you make a random bijection, the probability of there being a fixed point approaches roughly 63% as the domain increases. Thus, if the universe was discrete, and obeyed the law of increasing entropy, then there would only be a working time loop about two thirds of the time even if you didn’t try to prevent one.
Humans are made of atoms. Atoms behave continuously. Therefore, human decisions are continuous. A human can no more follow the algorithm you gave than Buridan’s ass can follow the algorithm of “Eat the bigger bale of hay first, or the one on the left if you can’t tell which is bigger”.
There is the whole quanta thing with quantum physics, but when you get to that point there are bigger problems. Which future does the Time Turner come from? How can you have single universe time travel when the physics you’re using already established more than one universe?
I think this is the compositional fallacy: Humans are made of atoms. Atoms are smaller than pennies. Therefore, humans are smaller than pennies.
I don’t mean that your conclusion is false, just that your argument is (as read) invalid.
Let me rephrase that.
Humans are systems of atoms. Systems of atoms behave continuously. Therefore, human decisions are continuous.
It’s the same principle that lets me conclude that any machine you make obeys the law of conservation of energy when all I know is that it’s made of atoms.
Lots of things are discreet to within measurement error. Flip a coin. Its heads or its tails or you flip again. There is some (not exactly zero) probability the coin along with many other atoms spontaneously reconfigure into a Velociraptor and eat you. But in practice its binary.
What measurement error? If there was some sort of god that was not quite omniscient that tried to find a self-consistent timeline, then it would have a hard time. To my knowledge, there’s no way that god could generally even be sure any given point is anywhere near a stable time loop, no matter how precise its measurement. I don’t get the impression there is such a god. It’s just that one of the self-consistent timelines happen. The universe has a set of laws of physics and a set of initial conditions, and some timeline where all that applies happens.
What does “behave continuously” mean?
It means that a sufficiently small change in the initial value will cause an arbitrarily small change in the final value. This is true for real life systems, but if you had a truly binary system, it wouldn’t be. For example, if you have a switch that conducts electricity if it’s flipped more than half way, and you flip it exactly half way, then if you flip it any more, no matter how little you move it, it will instantly go from being an insulator to being a conductor.
This is true of a particular model of reality, namely classical mechanics, but it seems to be a contentious claim that it’s true of reality itself. AFAIK physicists take the possibility that reality might be discrete fairly seriously.
To my knowledge, it’s true of every model of reality.
There have already been stable time loops in both canon Harry Potter and in Methods. If the universe is discrete, there won’t generally be a stable time loop. It’s not going to take Harry trying to break time to cause a paradox.
The universe is chaotic. Not every aspect is, but that’s not necessary. If you go back in time one way and look at the Brownian motion, and go back with the initial conditions changed by one, the Brownian motion will be completely different. It will basically be random. If you make a random bijection, the probability of there being a fixed point approaches roughly 63% as the domain increases. Thus, if the universe was discrete, and obeyed the law of increasing entropy, then there would only be a working time loop about two thirds of the time even if you didn’t try to prevent one.